Mark L. Stout Consulting is an all-purpose transportation consulting firm, specializing in finance, program management, and legislative and DOT policy. Our company has served public agencies and non-profits, big and small, all across the nation. Mark is widely-recognized as an expert whose years of experience can help organizations to break through gridlock and deliver transformative projects and innovative community enhancements.

Mark L. Stout Consulting

Monday, April 28, 2014

The new Maryland House rest stop is beginning to look
cheerier now that we actually seem to have a spring in the Northeast.The new facility has a lot to be said
for it (as it should for $30 million).This is reputedly the busiest rest stop in the entire US, so it’s important
to get it right.

Just a few thoughts:

·The traffic pattern needs work.Although it may have made sense on paper,
I found myself having a difficult time finding the pathway back to I-95.Lots of possibilities for conflicts.

·The traffic info panel is good, but still not
doing what I think technology can do for us.We need to get to real multimedia, interactive displays with
more information and more razz-ma-tazz.

·Why is the tourist information area so much smaller
than the old one was?

·Interesting to see that the landscaped strip
leading to the front door (which looks like it was designed just as a partition
in the parking field) has been converted by the traveling public into a green
pedestrian pathway!

All in all, Maryland has done a good job with the new
facility.I just miss the old
Maryland House, a rather picturesque and sentimental landmark for many of us
for many years.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Congrats to WISPIRG for leading the way in stopping one
extraordinarily bad highway project in Wisconsin (see Streetsblog USA story
here).

WisDOT has dropped plans to widen State Highway 38, a
winding, mostly rural, two-lane road with no apparent need for major improvements.Although WisDOT says the project was
stopped due to local opposition, I believe the fact that WISPIRG highlighted
the Route 38 project in its 2011 “Building Boondoggles” report (available here)
was really the beginning of the end.

Having provided research for WISPIRG on the “Boondoggles”
report, I have to say this project is one of the least meritorious I have ever
come across.It’s a mystery why it
progressed so far, and a good thing that it has ground to a halt.Let’s hope this is the beginning of
better choice making in Wisconsin, which has plenty of real transportation
challenges to cope with.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Another Earth Day, with another set of uneven indicators of
progress.But let’s leave aside
the glum indicators from the political sector (in the US) and smile at the
technological progress in renewables.You may seen reports on the new UN study (available here) which shows
real advances on that front.My
favorite sentence: “Sharply falling prices for solar panels and wind turbines
meant renewable energies in 2013 accounted for over 43% of new generating
capacity globally while raising the share of renewables to 8.5% of the global
electricity supply.”

One supposes that it’s this news that has various fossil
fuel corporations and Flat Earth politicians looking for ways to penalize users
of renewable energy.

Although the UN report mentions the transportation sector
only tangentially, there is an important connection.Electrifying transportation makes sense for a lot of
reasons.But to get the maximum
impact on greenhouse gas emissions, that electrification needs to be based
increasingly on no-carbon/low-carbon energy generation.

Monday, April 21, 2014

After years of prep work New Jersey’s Pulaski Skyway is
closed for 2 years for major rehab work, costing upwards of $1 billion.Having been in at the beginning of this
project I’m happy to see it move forward, though it’s a complicated story.After spending that $1 billion (and
actually a lot more than that, when you add in all the extraordinary
maintenance costs over the past several years) we will have a 3 ½-mile long
structure connecting Newark with the Holland Tunnel, but not located where you
would put it today – and since it traverses miles of wetlands it would be
problematic to build it at all today.In fact, if you were given $1 billion and told you could spend it
anywhere in New Jersey to improve mobility, you probably wouldn’t spend it
here.

The Pulaski Skyway is a piece of legacy infrastructure that’s
too important not to save, too expensive to tear down, doesn’t generate enough
traffic to impose tolls, and can’t handle trucks.

Are there lessons to be drawn from the Pulaski Skyway
project?I would say two:First, we have some major pieces of
legacy transportation infrastructure that are going to require some tough decision
making over the next several years.Second, don’t try to draw too many lessons from big pieces that have so
many unique features.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

As I said before, it’s easy to read too much into special
elections.The WaPo story notes
that turnout was only 16%.And
although some of the voters interviewed referred to the Columbia Pike Streetcar
issue, I doubt that anyone did any sort of exit polling to determine the actual
leverage this issue had.Also,
transit advocates can take some comfort in the fact that the anti-streetcar candidate
did not oppose all transit improvements in this campaign: his basic argument
was that bus rapid transit is the best solution in the corridor.

Still – there is no blinking at the fact that the streetcar
project sustained a setback.For
many of us, the virtues of a walkable/bikeable, transit-oriented-development
corridor, based on a transportation spine using a modern, electrified public
transportation system, seem to be obvious.And, indeed, Arlington is a showcase for TOD planning and
development, with the Orange Line communities sustaining a high quality of life
in bustling, sustainable, mixed-use settings.

Nevertheless, streetcar advocates need to work harder to get
their message across.

And despite the potential benefits of the Columbia Pike streetcar,
both for the community and for TOD planning and development nationally, Arlington
has gotten very little support from the state and federal governments.Much more needs to be done at those
levels.FTA and Virginia DOT, I’m
looking at you.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Transit advocates will be closely watching an April 7
special election in Arlington, Virginia.What would normally seem to be a pretty inconsequential election for a
vacant county board seat may determine the fate of the Columbia Pike streetcar
project.That project – a
potential East Coast showcase for using streetcar technology as the
transportation spine of a transit oriented development corridor – has been a
key element of Arlington’s future development plans.Now it is meeting with vigorous opposition from a
well-financed board candidate representing a rather hazy coalition of
anti-streetcar forces.True, the
candidate in question doesn’t present himself as anti-transit; he says he just
favors a much cheaper bus rapid transit option.(TV news account here.)

Since a special election
for a county board seat usually attracts only a tiny voter turnout, it may be
possible to read too much into the outcome. Nevertheless it is an election with a clear choice and may
have significant consequences.
Let’s see what happens.

Friday, April 4, 2014

This remarkable question is posed in a remarkably silly story
in the New York Times (here).The
Big Mac question is supposed to be a simplified summary of “the debate over
repairs to the nation’s federal highways.”(Note that the writer, who is obviously poorly informed on
these matters, appears most of the time to be referring to the Interstate
highway system in his story.Worst
quote: “By law, money from the Highway Trust Fund cannot be used for state
roads.”Uh…no.)

The point of the story appears to be that there is a debate
of sorts between people who advocate tolling as a solution to highway funding
and those who object for various reasons (fast food vendors among others).This is true as far as it goes, but
misses several points that I think are important.First of all, the Interstate system has big needs, but it is
only one segment of a transportation network with a lot of big needs.As a practical matter, tolling works
well in some places, but would be difficult to apply to many segments of the
Interstate system – especially metropolitan areas, where most of the traffic
is.Increased use of tolling – and
higher tolls – would definitely raise some money, but nowhere near enough to
offset the decline in the Highway Trust Fund.

More importantly, the story pretty much avoids what I regard
as the central question: why don’t we just raise the gas tax to pay for repairs
to the Interstate system, repairs to other highways and transit systems, and
beginning to build a real 21st century transportation network?As I have said before, avoiding using
the gas tax to pay for transportation needs is like avoiding the hammer in
front of you when you have a nail to drive, and instead searching around the
room for wastebaskets, heavy books, or staplers to use.The story does quote former Governor
Rendell as saying we should look at more tolling because “there is no appetite
to increase the gas tax.”And one
anti-tolling advocate is cited as arguing for an increased gas tax.But why is there no appetite for the
gas tax?No one likes raising
taxes, but for many years there was bipartisan support in Congress for bumping
up the gas tax when it was needed.The missing piece of the story is the rising influence of anti-tax, Tea
Party conservatives, who have had a corrosive effect on federal investment in
anything, including transportation.

The good news is that we have seen a rebirth of bipartisan
transportation funding efforts at the state level.Republican legislators in Pennsylvania and Virginia probably
didn’t have an “appetite” for raising the gas tax either, but they voted for
it.

Hopefully we will begin to have a real and constructive
debate on these issues – and hopefully the New York Times will do a better job
of covering it.